For 400 years, Taiwanese have been subject to foreign colonizers -- first the Dutch and Spanish, then the Manchu Empire, then the Japanese empire and finally the "Republic of China" KMT Chinese Nationalist Regime of Chiang Kai-shek and his son. In particular the last 100 years of first Japanese then KMT rule were brutal in attempted obliteration of Taiwan's Identity. Herein is chronicled the fight for its recovery.

Monday, October 3, 2011

Refreshingly, an Austronesian Taiwanese uses her real name in the Mandarin-speaking education system

Malai-yitzu Temalalate is a 20-year-old Paiwan woman. Her transliterated name in Chinese includes nine Chinese characters and a dot separating the two parts of her name. It had to be edited in a special way so that all the characters could fit in the space for names on the ID card. She said that because her name is so special, teachers often pay more attention to her during roll call. Many of her classmates want to get to know her because of her extremely long name, allowing her to make many new friends.

Temalalate studies at Tzu Chi College of Technology in Hualien. She is an only child, and both of her parents are also members of the Paiwan ethnolinguistic group. Her ancestors were chieftains, so she has always received a lot of attention since she was very little. Her father gave her the beautiful Paiwan name of Malai-yitzu, which refers to the beauty of a woman that even the blooming flowers and full moon cannot match. Temalalate identifies her as a member of a specific tribe.

She said she used to go by her Han Chinese name, Lee Nien-tzu, when she was a little girl, and that her elementary school classmates still call her by that name. She started using this significantly longer transliterated name when she started junior high school. At first she was not used to being called by the name at all, and it always takes a long time to write her entire name when she has to fill out forms or take exams. Since her classmates do not know what to call her, and in order to make things simpler when introducing herself, she tells them to call her Malai, which is a shorter version of her given name.

Malai said there are about a dozen classmates in her school with an Aboriginal background, but she is the only one who uses an ancestral tribal name. She says that because of the name teachers always enjoy calling her name during roll call. Although she feels the name is an inconvenience when she gets a chop engraved or fills out applications, she is happy that companies tend to hire her because they think her name is very attractive.

One uses bó͘, "certain; particular," to particularize a mountain without specifically naming which one. Notice that in English the word "certain" has a broader range of meanings whereas Taiwanese uses distinct words.

• Unfortunately, because the R.O.C. government-in-exile suppresses the use of Taiwanese and other non-Mandarin languages in public schools in Taiwan, there is not much opportunity to learn the vocabulary of the non-Mandarin languages associated with an academic setting. Furthermore, few essay or papers in these languages have ever been written by students. The normal editing processes are never experienced. The following Taiwanese expressions describe editing practices.

* Underline this sentence = "kā chit kú ê ē-bīn oē sûn"

oē = draw ; sûn = line ; ē-bīn = underneath

[Notice the homonym: the noun oē 話 in "kú-oē" meaning speech/word and the verb oē 畫 meaning draw/sketch. These two homonyms are obviously different in their Han characters. But actually in the romanization, one has very little trouble differentiating them because of their distinct parts of speech and the noun often being associated in a compound word and the verb often being associated with an object -- e.g. kú-oē "sentence" vs. oē tô͘ "draw a picture" ]

Kho͘ is a verb that means "to circle" ; kho͘-á is the noun that means "a circle" -- just as in English one can say: "Circle this sentence." or "Circle a circle around this sentence." Or to get more fancy you could translate it as "Circumscribe a circle..."

* If the word or phrase is really poorly written, sometimes you should just strike it out. Taiwanese is quite vivid in the way to say that. Jack-the-Ripper fashion, literally, you say "kill/murder/slash that sentence!" = "Kā hit kú-oē thâi-tiāu." or "murder that word..." = "Kā hit jī thâi-tiāu." This word "thâi," meaning kill/murder/slash w/knife, is also what someone who is good at bargaining can do: Kā i thâi kè-siàu. "Cut/kill the price."

• Poa̍h-kiáu 賭博 means "gambling." In the fall of 2009 there was a referendum being held in Phêⁿ-ô͘ (Penghu or the Pescadores) on whether or not to allow gambling casinos ( kiáu-keng ). Unfortunately, gambling profits are often controlled by organized crime ( o͘-siā-hōe ) and corrupt government officials ( tham-ù ê chèng-hú ). Where you find casinos you also find drugs ( to̍k-phín ), violence ( po̍k-le̍k ), sexual crimes ( sek-chêng ), and human trafficking ( jîn-kháu ê bé-bē) where the victims are controlled with drugs ( iōng to̍k-phín khòng-chè in ). A few people or mafia organizations can make huge profits off gambling, but for most residents, there is no benefit ( hó-chhù ) but rather an accumulation of societal problems -- particularly addiction in its various forms.

· Taiwanese still has the saying with variations that basically translate as "An Austronesian Grandmother and a Hoklo Grandfather" --- For example,

"Ū tn̂g soaⁿ-kong, bô Tn̂g-soaⁿ-má." -- "Have a Han grandfather, but no Han grandmother..." With that intermarriage of Austronesian and Han that makes up today's Taiwanese people, I thought it would be interesting to share some marriage and kinship related terms:

Chheⁿ-ḿ 生姆 or originally written 青姆 means a son or daughter's mother-in-law. Mandarin uses a different word: 親家母

This expression "teh ùn tāu-iû" is used in social circumstances to describe very short visits. If someone "drops by" and then leaves, it is like dipping food in soy sauce.

This expression is also very appropriate to describe the attitude of the Chinese Nationalists of Chiang Kai-shek's regime. They treated Taiwan as a temporary place from which they would fight back to China. They spoke of winning back China within three years after fleeing as refugees to Taiwan in 1949. So you can notice today that all the beautiful architecture is mainly from the Japanese era (pre-1945). The KMT regime put up many hasty structures, allowed squatter shack communities of former soldiers to take over many of the parks in the cities, and generally allow industry to heavily pollute the environment and degrade the landscape because they thought of Taiwan mainly as a resource to be exploited before heading back to China.

These two words are what the colonialist KMT Chinese Nationalist Party and the Japanese empire before them in Taiwan did in an attempt to destroy Taiwan's native languages.

• "developed baby fat from nursing" hàng-leng

When a nursing infant grows well with lots of fat rolls, one does not call the infant the common words for "fat" such as pûi-ê or tōa-kho͘-ê. Taiwanese has this special word hàng-leng for "baby fat." If you say that about a baby, the mother will be very delighted to receive the complement. Incidentally, the word tōa-kho͘ literally means "large circumference" and kho͘ specifically refers to the metal bands that circle around the old wooden buckets and hold the pieces of wood together. (Or think of whiskey barrels.)

In Taiwan, you can still sometimes bargain for things you buy. But unlike Thailand, it is usually pretty standardized so that people are not automatically marking up the price 400 percent because you are a foreigner. So even if you do not bargain, you can get a decent price in Taiwan.